A poem for 9/11 by NC State’s Poet in Residence

After most of the bodies were hauled away and while the FBI and Fire Department and NYPD were still haggling about who was in charge, as smoke cleared,the figures in Tyvek suits came, gloved, gowned, masked,ghostly figures searching rubble for pieces of people,bagging, then sending the separate and commingled remains to the temporary morgue set up on site.This is where the snip of forefinger began its journey.

Not alone, of course, but with thousands of other bits not lost or barged off with the tonnage for sorting at the city landfill.A delicate tip, burnt and marked “finger, distal” and sent over to the Medical Examiner’s, where forensic anthropologistssorted human from animal bones from Trade Center restaurants, all buried together in the Pompeian effect of incinerated dust.

The bit of finger (that might have once tapped text messages,potted a geranium, held a glass, stroked a cat, a lover’s face,tugged a kite string along a beach) went to the Bio Lab where it was profiled, bar-coded, and shelved in a Falcon tube.Memorial Park, that is to say: the parking lot behind the ME,droned with generators for the dozens of refrigerated trucksfilling with human debris, while over on the Hudson at Pier 94 families brought toothbrushes or lined up for DNA swabbing.

As the year passed, the unidentified remains were dried outin a desiccation room–humidity pumped out, heat raised high–shriveled, then vacuumed sealed. But the finger tip hada DNA match in a swab from her brother. She was English.30 years old. She worked on the 105th floor of the North Tower.The Times ran a bio. Her friends posted blogs. Her fatherwill not speak about it. Her mother planted a garden in Manhattan.In that garden is a tree. Some look on it and feel restored.Others, when the wind lifts its leaves, want to scream.